


Death Is Not so Different from Love

by thein273



Series: The Chronicles of Choice [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Amateur Therapy, Canon Divergence - The Last Olympian, Dead Percy Jackson, Depression, Eating Disorders, Especially Not Annabeth, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hades is a Good Parent, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Mystery, No One Coddles Nico In This, Read the Myths, Self-Harm, Sexuality Crisis, Underage Substance Use, and a Great Uncle, fight me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-12-31 06:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21100022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thein273/pseuds/thein273
Summary: The Second Titanomachy is finished. Its hero is dead. Now the aftermath demands a new, different fight of NICO DI ANGELO and the other survivors: a war of recovery.





	1. Part 1

DEATH IS NOT SO DIFFERENT FROM LOVE

* * *

PART ONE

"_Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.__"_

_~ Steve Jobs_

* * *

THE WAR IS OVER. Many are dead, among them the great PERCY JACKSON, without whom no one knows how to continue. As NICO DI ANGELO struggles to find a perfect solution to their (and his own) grief, the harsh reality only becomes more inescapable: pain cannot be solved, only lived through.

There's just one problem with that. No one knows how to live through it, least of all Nico. Can CAMP HALF-BLOOD survive its strongest foe yet: itself?

**WARNINGS: Depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, rape survivor, realistic struggles with sexuality, underage promiscuity.**

* * *

All rights belong to Rick Riordan, Hyperion Books Inc., and other affiliated copyright owners.

* * *

FOREWORD

The following is a companion piece to _The Scarred Hero __Trilogy_, existing within _The Chronicles of Choice _universe. You don't have to read the greater story to understand this side of the tale.

This is not a traditional story in any way, even less than _The Forgotten Fear_. It shares the most in common with contemporary fiction, exploring and demystifying mental illness as realistically as I, with the knowledge available to me, can achieve. Please note that any incongruities _may _be side effects of differing experiences _or _my own failure to properly research the struggles of these characters. If you take objection, feel free to contact me privately and inform me as such. If you are comfortable presenting your own experiences, feel free; I will not judge, and I will not offer consolations unless you ask for them.

There are also strong mystery elements here. If you want to rip your hair out along with Nico trying to figure it out as you go, feel free. _The Scarred Hero _kills a great deal of the mystery in it.

This story was also borne from my hatred of the injustices committed against complex characters by _The Heroes of Olympus_. I apologize if you hold that series in equal esteem to its predecessor, but it attempted to retroactively vilify Percy Jackson in a vain attempt to validate the rationale of someone suffering from severe depression without acknowledging that mental illness clouds the mind. Instead of illuminating the grey area to a complicated dynamic, it restructured a beloved fictional character as a narcissistic monster while ignoring any and all faults in another, whose complexity in the original series had been at the root of why I loved him, and it framed it in such a way as to infer homosexuals are bereft of flaws. This mentality is equally as harmful to the community as its uneducated vilification.

Furthermore, the neglect of realistic mental illness in the story enraged me even more than the re-contextualization of several scenes in the original series. I could write you guys a very, very long essay on why I grieve the _Percy Jackson _universe. Feel free to ask for one. If you can convince me not to mourn it, and that _The Heroes of Olympus _didn't have the inherent, fundamental issues to it I think it did—namely, regarding its depictions of sexuality and mental illness—then by all means. I don't want to have these problems with it, and I would love if someone could change my mind.

Please note if you read the reviews on this story but have not read _The Scarred Hero_, you might be spoiled.

Enjoy _Death Is Not so Different from Love_.


	2. Part 1.1

"_Our dead are never death to us, until we have forgotten them." ~George Eliot_

* * *

_What comes after war?_

Over and over again, this thought plays through my mind as dozens of funeral pyres lick the heavens with their heat, beautifully decorated shrouds blackening in chunks as the memories of those they represent consume them. I lead the attendees in an Ancient Greek hymn of memorial, although we enchant it numbly, our spirits hovering in limbo with the fallen, yet our breaths still mingling in the atmosphere with other inhabitants of the living world.

None of us truly feel alive, I know. The grief, so deep that it permeates the valley thicker than the curtain of death from which it spawned permeates Manhattan, separates our consciousnesses from the triumph we should feel. Yet I also know, as they relearn the ways of vivaciousness, I will continue to wander, a mere shade among them, until I escape somewhere else. They will remember to thrive. I will only endure.

No one moves until every shroud is reduced completely to ash. When the embers have lost their glow, our procession shambles—as corpses shamble to my will—toward the woods. The debris of Zeus' Fist no longer resides over the dormant entrance of the ancient hellscape of Daedalus' Labyrinth, replaced by glossy obsidian, matte carvings etched deep into its facade.

_Θυμηθείτε τους ήρωες που έβαλαν τη ζωή τους με γενναιότητα. Οι αναμνήσεις σας δεν θα εξασθενίσουν ποτέ._

Its English translation burns in my thoughts: _Remember the heroes who laid down their lives with bravery. Your memories will never fade._

I personally etched the first into the stone, and even now, it still summons icy tears to the corners of my eyes. I do not suppress them. No one stands impassive before this memorial.

_Bianca di Angelo_

The second name, directly underneath my lost sister's, was carved with the neat handwriting of her surviving friends, although its sight ignites a boiling hatred in my gut at the memory of the woman who stole my family from me with promises of immortality that never came to be.

_Zoe Nightshade_

Dozens more names surround those, likewise immortalized by the hands of their surviving loved ones.

_Lee Fletcher_

_Castor McGuire_

_Charles Beckendorf | Silena Beauregard_

_Micheal Yew_

_Ethan Nakumara_

On and on, the names continue. Many, I do not recognize, belonging to fallen Hunters of Artemis or deceased traitors I never met, recognized by their friends, accepted into the fold only after they pledged allegiance to Olympus upon the Styx. Only one dead traitor does not find his name upon the slab.

Then, beneath them all, each letter in the different handwriting of his many grief-stricken loved ones, there is another name, larger than the others, a wave curving around its end like an ornate period. The end of our grief. The highest of it. The "a" looks as it does on Bianca's name.

_Perseus Jackson_

* * *

The dead work quickly, and for that reason alone can I peacefully pack my few meager belongings into a drawstring bag on the temporary bed they scavenged for me from one of the unclaimed cots in Cabin Six. Its silver comforter compliments the shadowy hues of its surroundings, although I have yet to rest my head here, nor will I.

The drawstring hisses against the fabric as I pull it taut, slinging it over one shoulder as I forge toward the door. It opens when I outstretch my hand, and I stagger backward to meet the bloodshot eyes of a romantic rival with whom I could never compete.

Annabeth Chase's least composed moments had always been in the heat of battle for as long as I have known her. I thought nothing else could streak her tanned face with lines of white anxiety, sap the richness of her complexion, cover her passionate grey gaze with a film of exhaustion, or underline it with dark, deep eyebags.

Now, though, I know grief can also bring her low.

"What are you doing?" Her voice comes out a steady hiss, injected with enough venom to kill a god. Despite myself, I back up. Few people can instill any degree of terror in me. Annabeth is one of them.

Yet I remember my resolve and plant my feet, lift my chin defiantly. "Leaving." I try to imbue my voice with the confidence I felt seconds ago, though it steadily withers under her stormy glare.

"No," she says, "you're not."

"What?" I demand. "You're going to stop me somehow?"

Annabeth doesn't answer, only matches willpower with me. I begin to fear mine cannot survive her ire.

"I don't belong here, Annabeth," I tell her, and though I mean for it to sound commanding as hers does, it comes out a quiet reminder. Its pain is an old one, faded against the backdrop of new grief, yet its edges still curl with the passion for it I felt at its inception.

"Wrong," she says, catching me off-guard.

"_Scusa_?" The Italian floats naturally off my tongue, although I scarcely recall the flavor of it from my childhood, washed away in the current of the Lethe. While the involuntary language surprises me, Annabeth does not falter.

"Where are we right now?" she asks, as if walking a particularly stupid toddler through a lesson they should already understand.

"Camp Half-Blood," I say, eyes narrowing. I feel as though I am walking into her trap. I cannot fathom what it might be, however.

"Where _in _Camp Half-Blood?"

Ah. I shake my head. "Having a cabin doesn't mean—"

"Percy gave his life to give you a home, you ungrateful asshole!"

I stop and stare. Annabeth never swears, believing in finding better phrases to express her displeasure. The most I ever hear from her are quiet curses if something alarms her with a shot of pain. I suppose grief might be a steady enough, intense enough suffering to erode her self-control.

Her words, however, make no sense. "Percy died after the war finished," I tell her as softly as I can. Our love for him has not waned in the week since his death. "He didn't die to—"

"He gave up immortality!" And there it is. Bright, blazing in her eyes—the guilt. The belief that Percy would still be here, still be fine, if he had only accepted that shocking offer from the Olympians. The guilt over knowing, to some degree, she played a role in his refusal of their offer—in the inevitable culmination of his mortality. "He gave up immortality so everyone would have a home! So _you _could!"

And the numb phase of grief, the marriage between denial and depression that protects me from so much, evaporates. "I had nothing to do with it!" I scream, tears pouring hot down my cheeks. "He just specified—"

"He loved you!" she roars. "You were his family! _He loved you_!"

"_Not the way I loved him_!"

Annabeth brings her hand across my cheek hard. I stagger, vision flashing with images I cannot register. I pant through them, heart pounding, hands shaking. I find myself against the wall when I recover, looking at Annabeth in bewilderment as tiny beads of blood seep through the pads of my fingers. I expect remorse to greet me. Instead, I see disgust.

"Is that all that matters to you?" she demands. "Is that _really _all you care about? Who makes out with you on Valentine's Day?"

I gape hopelessly at her, unable to respond.

"_Percy loved you_," she says, convicted. "He loved everyone, and that's more than enough for the rest of us. For _me_. Why isn't it enough for you?"

"Annabeth, I—"

"Don't expect me to feel sorry for you just because you loved another guy," she snarls, teeth bared like a wild animal. "Love is love, Nico. Doesn't matter what genitalia the people involved have. If you think your sexuality entitles you to being holier-than-thou about how much _worse _you have it, think again."

"What do you know about it?" I demand, even though her words cut me deeper than I knew they could. "What do you know about how it feels to love someone you're not supposed to?"

"I loved Luke," she tells me, and I stop. "I loved a traitor, _while _he was a traitor, until he cost someone else I loved his life. And I loved a son of Poseidon. What makes you think yours is any more valid than mine?"

The unspoken hovers between us: _Or any less?_

My anger dies. I sink to the ground, bag thumping against the floor with barely a whisper. I hold my head in my hands.

"I don't know," I admit.

Denim caresses the tile as Annabeth kneels in front of me. "Is it from your past?"

I glance up at her. Her gaze is soft now, patient. I'm not sure how her emotions can change so quickly. If mine did that, I worry it might kill me. "What do you mean?"

"Hades washed your memories away in the Lethe," she says. I wonder why she's telling me something I already know. Until I don't. "It might be something from before, in your old life."

I hug my knees lightly, staring past her at the wall. "Maybe."

"I can help you find out what."

I look at her again, certain I misheard. She only smiles. I shake my head. "There's no way to get my memories back," I say. "They're _gone. _The Lethe—"

"There's no way for you to remember on your own," she agrees. "Some immortals still remember for you."

I shake my head firmly. "No. My father refuses—"

"Not Hades," she says.

I stop, narrow my eyes at her.

Annabeth only smiles. "I think it's time you and I found the Titaness of Memory.


	3. Part 1.2

"_To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." ~ J.K. Rowling_

* * *

"Annabeth, this—"

"Nico deserves to know who he is and where he comes from," Annabeth tells Chiron with more confidence than I feel, sitting on the free-hanging bench in front of the Big House. I stroke the smooth face of my sword for comfort, listening halfheartedly to the argument next to me. "We can't just ignore—"

"We all need rest," Chiron says firmly. "I can't allow you—"

"You know better than to think _disallowing _me will stop me," Annabeth says with too much bravado. She must have learned it from Percy, I think, and that quiets my already faint heartbeat even more. "Either condone the quest or we go alone."

Chiron hesitates. "What do you want, child?"

It takes me several seconds to realize the pause in conversation had been because the question was directed at me. I glance over. "I...I don't really care."

Chiron swivels his wheelchair around to face Annabeth. "There. A quest for Nico's sake he doesn't even—"

"This is all he _knows_, Chiron," Annabeth insists, far more fervent than I feel. You would think her mind had been the one washed clean. "The Lethe and Lotus Hotel took his whole life away from him. _Critical _formative years that still shaped his psyche, ripped away. He's resigned, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be happier with answers."

I appreciate her discretion. I never meant to confess my forbidden feelings. Annabeth stirred suppressed emotions in my chest, leaving us with a sticky aftermath. If she truly believed this quest would help—help _anything_—I must trust her. Even still, I'm not sure if she wants this for my sake or her own.

"The Lethe is irreversible, Annabeth," Chiron tells her staunchly. "There's no way to recover what it washes away, not while still in the physical form it—"

"But it has an antithesis," she insists, and here comes the lecture again. I lean back on the bench, knowing we'll be here for a while.

Chiron scowls. "There are only five rivers, Annabeth. The Mnemosyne was nothing more than—"

"It was a myth based on a _real Titan_."

"Do you think it wise to approach a Titan so soon after recent events?" Chiron challenges desperately. I eye him, suddenly distrustful. He sounds far too passionate to stay Annabeth from her mission. Why?

"Mnemosyne always remained impartial," Annabeth tells him. "The female Titans never chose a side in the Titanomachies."

"She will not tolerate trespassers!" Chiron cries. Annabeth stumbles, alarm etched deep into her face. Chiron calms, but his gaze remains pleading. "Please. We've lost too many heroes already."

My distrust evaporates, replaced by guilt. Chiron had witnessed thousands of heroes pass through his tutelage, primed for battle, and fall. He trained the greatest warriors in ages past, but I wonder if any prior deaths struck him as painfully as those of late. He loves his students as a father loves his children (allegedly). Annabeth had been like his adoptive daughter since she arrived as a seven-year-old, and many people claimed he cared for Percy just as much.

My expression softens even more when understanding dawns: Chiron carries with him the burden of immortality. He will care for heroes as long as they live the same way he will lead the funerals in their honor.

I expect Annabeth to relent before her grieving father-figure. Instead, she reaches out a gentle hand to touch his shoulder. "We'll be fine, Chiron," she promises. "There's nothing out there now we can't handle."

Again, looking into Chiron's eyes, I consider there might be danger lurking beyond our borders even still—danger he will not confide. With Kronos' forces scattered, disbanded by a colossal defeat and unled, what more could there be?

I shake my head forcefully. No. Chiron would not hide something critical to our survival from us. Of all the immortals, he's the only one we can trust.

He has to be.

Chiron sighs, resigned. "Have you chosen a third quest-taker?"

"We won't need one," Annabeth says. Chiron looks wary. "This isn't one of the formal quests we took before, Chiron. It's just looking for answers."

Chiron smooths the blanket covering his legs, contemplative. "Visit Rachel. She's still furnishing the cave."

"That's not really—"

"_See Rachel_," he orders, and Annabeth gives ground. She nods. "I want you both to be careful. Don't—" He pauses. "Avoid the Midwest at all costs."

My eyes shoot over to him. "Why?" I demand.

"The surviving monsters fled there," he explains. "It's farthest from anything—anywhere the gods or Camp Half-Blood might search."

I cannot dislodge the fear more hides behind Chiron's words, even as Annabeth promises to be careful and heads down the steps to the grassy field surrounding the base of operations. She glances back at me expectantly. I sigh and follow her.

* * *

Rachel has a paintbrush balancing between her teeth when we reach her cave, arms stretched as far apart as she can get them to hang a beautiful tapestry over one wall of the cavern. A rainbow scrunchie fails to restrain her crazed red curls.

"Interior decorating trouble?" Annabeth asks, all-friendly, as she smiles at her friend from the entrance.

Rachel glances over and beams. The paintbrush tumbles from her mouth, splashing her front with gold pigment. A drop also gets on the tapestry. She either doesn't notice the stain or doesn't care. Knowing her rugged artist's style, she doesn't care.

"Annabeth!" She charges over and hugs her. Annabeth groans at the splotchy streak of paint that appears on her shirt. Rachel backs up and winces. "Oops. Sorry. It looks kinda avant garde, though."

"It looks like my best friend just attacked me with paint." Annabeth's tone is affectionate, though.

Rachel chuckles fondly. The good mood dies when she looks at me. "Bad news?"

I shift, trying not to be bitter about someone assuming my presence automatically foretells misfortune. I'm not the doomsaying Oracle of Delphi in this room. "No. Just a quest," I say, and Rachel's wince tells me I failed at not being bitter.

"So bad news," she says under her breath.

I clench my fists, but Annabeth steadies me, looking at Rachel. "It's about the most recreational a quest can be, actually," Annabeth says. "We're trying to find a way to restore Nico's memories."

Rachel starts to wrinkle her nose in confusion, then a faint light dawns behind her green eyes like she remembered something. "Oh! Right. The whole..." She gestures around the room vaguely. "Thing."

I almost ask how she knows my situation until I recall her several visions leading up to her decision to take on the Oracle's spirit. One of them had been the same scene shown to me when I attempted to summon my mother's ghost, if the conversation I had with her outside Olympus was any indication.

Of course, then I remember searching for Percy with Annabeth and finding only a dead starfish in his father's trembling hands. I shake my head free of the pain and focus on the present.

"Well...then I guess you probably need a prophecy, huh?" Rachel vainly attempts to tame her wild mane.

Annabeth turns to look at me. "I'd say this is your quest, Nico." She motions at Rachel.

I scowl, but look at Rachel nonetheless. "How do we find Mnemosyne?"

I expect the theatrics: spewing green smoke, layered voice carrying over the cave in an eerie chant, everything my few encounters with the Oracle led me to believe status-quo.

Rachel just stands there.

We all exchange a look of confusion. Rachel chuckles nervously. "Uh...maybe try a different question?" She sounds sheepish.

I start to doubt this quest again, but ask, "How do I recover my past memories?"

Still, Rachel stands before us, arms spreading and face scrunched together as though willing herself to channel the power. Nothing happens.

"I'm sorry," she says finally. "I don't know what's going on."

I sigh. "I do. This—"

"It's just an added challenge," Annabeth says, clapping her hands together with far more cheeriness than she should have. It suddenly dawns on me that, since promising to help me recover my past, Annabeth has been much more bombastic and lively. "We'll have to figure it out without a prophecy's help."

I frown. "Prophecies are helpful?"

"C'mon, Nico," Annabeth encourages, heading out. "We've got research to get started on."

Rachel and I exchange a look, which feels odd, considering how little we even know each other. Rachel steps forward. "Annabeth, maybe—"

"Sorry, Rachel. I really would love to have girl-talk, but this takes precedence. Nico, let's _go._"

I sigh and follow, braced for the inevitable mental breakdown. I just hope I'm not around when it hits.


	4. Part 1.3

"_If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character… Would you slow down? Or speed up?" ~ Chuck Palahniuk_

* * *

Annabeth is stalling.

I know this, though I doubt she recognizes the signs in herself. The best forethought demigod to grace the world in two generations, she departed from Camp Half-Blood with me trailing behind her without a plan or trajectory. My attempts to talk sense back into her failed. Now, we sit in a foul-smelling backstreet, huddled next to a dumpster with a tiny fire warming us from a chilly night un-belonging in a New York summer. I wonder if Annabeth thinks as I do: nature grieves the loss of Percy Jackson as we do.

"Can we please admit the obvious?" I ask her tiredly, clutching my aviator jacket tighter around my shivering frame.

Annabeth's stubbornly cheerful smile grates my frayed nerves as she turns her face from the fire to look at me. "We just have to wait until morning," she says. "Then—"

"This isn't a quest," I snap. "This is denial."

Annabeth arches a slender golden eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"This—"

Something crashes deeper in the alleyway. In seconds, Annabeth and I are on our feet, her knife glinting in harsh juxtaposition against the obsidian blade gripped in my hand sapping the light from its surroundings. Quick, jerky hand motions communicate what our mouths cannot risk saying aloud. Annabeth nods, responding in kind with adjustments I accommodate. Our minds work well together, I think, as Annabeth slips her invisibility cap over her restrained curls and I fade into shadow.

Darkness offers a strange respite from life for scions of Hades, its courtship with the dominion of death such that it refreshes us while summoning a brilliant ache to our chests each time we find refuge in it. It revitalizes fatigued muscles with newfound solidity, but for the briefest of moments traversing its interlocking, interconnected channels, there is another freedom, a seductive twin to vivaciousness named oblivion, and as the shadows fall away like silken sheets from my solid form again, I crave it with a desperation none could understand.

I expect a clumsy monster to await me; instead, I find a boy, a teenager, who smells fetid with stale liquor, paper bag soaked in his limp, outstretched hand, the tip of a beer bottle peeking from its entrapment to leak a thin river of amber alcohol onto the pavement.

I nudge his face with my boot. He grunts. Annabeth shimmers into existence anew beside me with a deep scowl on her face. "He's our age," she comments.

I frown at her. "Yes."

"He's drunk, Nico," she points out. I wait for her point. She sighs. "I know Europe doesn't care about underage drinking the same way, but in _America_, you're supposed to be twenty-one."

I blink steadily. "Yes," I agree. "If no one did the things laws told them not to, Annabeth, there wouldn't be so many souls in the Fields of Punishment."

She sighs and kneels down, contemplating the unconscious boy. He murmurs in his sleep, rolling onto his side as he hugs his empty bottle to his chest. I scowl. "Does he look familiar to you?" Annabeth asks me suddenly.

"It's dark," I remind.

She gives me a frank look.

I sigh. "Yes. I think so, but it doesn't matter. I don't want to—"

The boy shoots awake without warning, scrambling back as the bottle rolls away. Blurry violet eyes scan his surroundings, sharpening only some when he finds us. Those violet eyes remind me of another man—portly, dressed in gaudy patterned shirts while rooted to a patio chair before a table of cards across from a wheelchair-bound centaur. His Lord Dionysus, sovereign of the disciplines of wine and madness, otherwise called Mr. D by disgruntled campers tired of his unending complaints toward mortality.

"_Pollux_?" Annabeth hisses in disbelief.

"Wh're y' 're?" he slurs, gaze attempting severity through his intoxication. His eyes cross as if to follow doubles of us weaving in and out of his vision. "G'ay."

"You're drunk," I tell him, figuring obvious statements best to communicate with him in this state. He glares at me as though I have called him something inappropriate. "Why didn't you go back to camp with everyone else?"

"Di't wanna." He tries to stand, only to sway and collapse.

"Dear _gods_, Pollux," Annabeth says. "How much did you drink?"

He gives her a strange look, then holds up his hand. He holds up a single finger, begins to unfurl its neighbor, and frowns. He starts over.

I groan. "This will get us nowhere," I say. "I'll take him back to Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth, I'm not strong enough to take you with me, so—"

"No!" Annabeth cries, a bright smile across her face. Pollux hisses and covers an ear; at least, he tries to, missing his own extremity by a foot. I narrow my eyes at Annabeth. "It's so obvious now, I could smack myself! _Pollux _is the third member of the quest!"

I stare at her in disbelief, unable to wrap my mind around this belated stage of grief, but any harsh remarks on my part are interrupted by a graceless snore from our drunken companion.

I press the heel of my hand into my temple. Fitting, I think, for the third member of our nonexistent, mad quest to be the son of madness.

Together, Annabeth and I carry Pollux back to our camp.


	5. Part 1.4

"_Death ends a life, not a relationship." ~ Mitch Albom_

* * *

Two days later, Annabeth has not slowed down, and Pollux needs a hospital.

His skin shines with a thin film of sweat, tremors ransacking his body as he clutches his stomach with an intense, miserable expression. He hyperventilates and curls into a tight fetal position at every sudden sound or movement, otherwise glancing around with such extreme paranoia, I fear he might find himself saddled with the madness his father inflicts unto others. I held him upright when he vomited that morning, preventing him from falling into his own bile. The unfocused expression in his eyes tells of a headache. I worry for his health progressively as time passes.

Annabeth responds to my concern with flippancy, dismissing it as withdrawals; he will survive it all, stronger for it, and we have a quest to finish.

As Pollux huddles into a corner for the dozenth time, I snap. "Enough!"

Pollux whimpers and clutches his head. Annabeth falters, staggering to a stop a few feet ahead as she whirls to face me.

"He needs a _hospital_," I enunciate, motioning at Pollux. "I don't _care _if he's just having standard alcohol withdrawals. I don't _care _what or why or how or when. I don't _care _that you need a pointless quest to _not _cope with Percy's death. We're _done._"

Annabeth recoils as though struck. "_Excuse you_? How dare—"

"Chiron forbid you, Annabeth!" I scream. Pollux sobs, wound even tighter into himself as our argument builds. "_The Oracle of Delphi _didn't give us a prophecy! You left without even a partial plan—"

"Plans never work—"

"_You don't care_!" I grip my hair in my hands, ripping it from my scalp. "The Annabeth Chase I know loses her _mind _when she can't plan. This, Annabeth? This isn't anything resembling a quest. It's grief. It's _denial. _It's you trying and failing to emulate what Percy would do in our shoes because you can't accept he's dead!"

She lunges toward me, but I toss her aside with ease. She would outpace me on my best day in normal circumstances, but now, she's blinded by tears and pain. "Don't you dare accuse me of using him!" she shrieks. Pollux sobs louder. "You! Using—I'm trying to help you deal with your damn sexuality, Nico di Angelo!"

"No!" I scream back at her. "You're trying to help _yourself _deal with the death of the man we both loved! By _using _me as a scapegoat! By _using _his memory! And it needs to stop before Pollux drops dead!"

"He's _fine_!" Annabeth cries freely now, hunched over with pain.

"No!" I grip her shoulders. "He's a drunk! He's a drunk, and I _hate _that we have to deal with him at all, but we do because he's one of us and he needs a damn hospital! You need a reality check! And _I _need to stop humoring you! _No one is fine_!"

"Bring him back!" Annabeth yells at me. "_Bring him back_!" She pounds against my chest with her failing strength as she sinks to the ground. "I don't want to live without him! You want him back, too, so _bring him back_!"

"Annabeth—"

"You're the son of Hades!" She clutches either zipper of my jacket, bunching the fabric in her desperate hands. "You can do it!"

"Not without an exchange," I whisper. My eyes sting. I sob. "Not...not without the soul of someone who has evaded death, Annabeth." Tears roll hot down my cheeks. "You know that. You know..." I hung my head.

"_Try_," she pleads. "Try. You can have him, just _bring him back._" Harsh, broken sobs spill from her lips, each more horrible than the last.

"He wouldn't want me." There it is, the simple truth: no world in which Annabeth Chase lives would ever see Perseus Jackson love me as I do him. Goddesses could shower him with priceless gifts, his heart's every desire. He could owe me the very breath inside his resurrected lungs. As long as the daughter of Athena lives—as long as she _endures _in his memory—he will never love another.

And he will wait, forever and a night, in Elysium to reunite with her. He will brave the harshest storms, burn alive in the hottest fires, endure the worst cataclysms to arrive at her side, but short of that, he will wait, and he will smile, and he will refuse the finest loves of the ages for as long as it took to hold her hands again.

Compared to Percy and Annabeth, Orpheus and Eurydice were a teenage phase.

"I wouldn't look back," Annabeth whispers into my jacket. "For him, I wouldn't look back."

I rub her back softly. "Neither would I," I tell her. "Neither would I."

Annabeth goes to Mrs. Jackson's apartment and I take Pollux back to Camp Half-Blood. We say nothing of our lost love again.


	6. Part 1.5

"_Live your life, do your work, then take your hat." ~ Henry David Thoreau_

* * *

I fall asleep in a cot beside Pollux's minutes after bringing him to the Big House.

I dream of nothing until I dream of a dark, menacing palace hall, throne erected from the bones of conquered enemies, a man in dark robes that shift with the agonized faces of the damned seated comfortably in it. My apparition kneels before him, hovering feet from the ground.

"Father," I greet, voice tempered by respect though my wounded soul campaigns for incensed screams of unrest. "Why have you summoned me?"

"This isn't a formal affair, Nico," Hades says. A black armchair appears beside me without flourish. I stare. "Have a seat. There is much I wish to say to you."

I remember his treachery—the Hooded One, nearly as two-faced as Janus—when I agreed to bring Percy to him in exchange for information on my past. I distrust this sudden kindness on Hades' part. Hitler had been his son, too.

"I swear upon the River Styx, Nico, I have no ulterior motives here beyond amending my past mistakes. Please—sit down."

The sensation of _sitting _feels strange while disembodied, but I adjust. I watch Hades for a long time, unsure how to proceed. He appears as uneasy as I feel.

"You have much to say," he guesses accurately. "You've earned the right to say it."

"I have nothing to say to you."

Hades winces. He draws back a breath. "Yes...I deserve that." He meets my eyes with such sincere apology, I worry the Lord of the Dead has been replaced with a decoy. I consider warning Olympus. "Nico, I swear upon the River Styx, nothing you say here today will earn my ire. I will not punish you in any way. I will not demean you. I will not hurt you deliberately. Speak without fear of reprimand."

I resist the urge to gape. Hades only sits before me, _sheepish_, and waits for my anger. I sincerely worry my father has been replaced.

Hades sighs. "I _also _swear upon the Styx, I am, indeed, Hades, Sovereign of the Dead and the god of the riches beneath the earth, first-born male heir of Kronos and your father." My head falls forward just so to gape outwardly now. "No, Nico, I have not lost my mind."

"Momentarily misplaced it, then?"

He frowns. "Are you joking? I'm still learning sarcasm."

My lip quirks despite myself. "Yes, Father. That was sarcasm." I pause. "You don't want to hear what I think about you," I say honestly.

"Yes," he says, just as honestly and more earnestly, "I do."

I watch him for a while. "I miss Bianca enough," I say. Hades winces. "I miss her enough every day of my life without you taking every _single _opportunity to remind me how much better everything would be for everyone if she'd lived. _I _brought your house recognition upon Olympus through my _own _hard work, _not _her. I know I'll never be as good as—"

"You're better," he interrupts. I stop and stare again. His eyes shine. "I loved your sister dearly in her life and even—" His voice caught. "Even in her death." It strikes me as odd the Lord of the Underworld experiences the death of a child like mortals, but I refrain from commenting. "But Bianca fled from her problems until her demise. She believed the only amends she could make to you would be to die a hero. The prophecy predicted her senseless desperation to repent more than the necessity of her death. Percy would still have taken the Great Prophecy upon himself if—"

"_Percy_?" Should I have focused on anything else said? Yes. Could I focus on anything except my father's apparent newfound fondness for my cousin? No.

Hades frowns in confusion. "Yes. Your cousin. He—"

"You called him _Percy_?" I stare. "You...did his spirit wear you down? Did he just harass you until you stopped hating him as much?"

Hades—to my _shock_—blushes. "Something...akin to that, yes." He recovers smoothly. "May we return to the topic at hand?"

I falter and remember his words. "Bianca..." I sigh. "She was tired, Father. I was a trying child for a _parent_, and she..."

"Yes," he agrees. "I failed you both, and you have both paid the price for it."

I frown. "Father, what brought this on?"

Hades hangs his head. "Revelations from beyond a life, my son. Revelations from beyond a life."

I think the phrase is _revelations from beyond the grave_, but I choose not to correct him.

Hades looks at me. "I say...horrible things, sometimes believing them true, other times believing them better than honesty."

I blink.

He smiles. "I told you Bianca would have done a better job bringing Percy to me as I asked you to do because your sister had a ruthlessness in her you had to learn. I said it would have been better if Bianca had lived to complete the prophecy because I would not ask my youngest heir to shoulder such a trying responsibility unless I had no other choice left to me."

I cannot believe my ears. I only continue to stare.

"I love you, Nico," he tells me. "I am a poor father to ask for, yes, but that can never change my love for you. You have made me a thousand times prouder than I could ever expect to be in all my years."

Silence stretches thin between us after that, his sincere compassion re-contextualizing everything I believed I knew about him—and, in a way, _myself. _I recall the countless myths in which my father appears: Orpheus and Eurydice, Theseus and Perithous. Even some interpretations of his abduction of Persephone paint him as more compassionate than the other gods.

He can be cold, I know; he is callous, he is ruthless, he is unrelenting, but he is also capable of deep, sincere love and empathy. And if that is true, then perhaps our tragedy will give way to celebration.

I look at him. "I want them back," I say.

Hades' gaze turns sad. "Ni—"

"I." My voice firms. "Want. Them. _Back._"

He watches me for a time, expression unreadable, before he rises from his throne. I fear he might violate his oath and strike me down, but then he flicks his wrist. The guards in the corner sway, back-lit red eyes dimming. Their spears clatter to the floor before their skeletal forms collapse, breaking apart. Behind them, a dark, glass cabinet with ornate engravings along the stained wood displays a familiar sword, midnight blade finished with deadly precision, golden key set into the base with delicate, skeletal designs along the metal glinting silver with a dark, textured hilt.

"I have business to tend to in the world above," he says. "I will not be able to return to my palace for days. It would be a shame were some upstart demigod to steal my sword for unnatural means in my absence, don't you think?" He looks at me, eyes flashing with all the brilliant, shrewd madness he is known for.

A broad, bright smile spreads across my face. "Yes, Father," I say. "Tragic, even."

Hades vanishes.


	7. Part 1.6

"_I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." ~ Winston Churchill_

* * *

When I wake, I find Pollux vigil at my bedside, sipping from a glass of nectar with a mechanized lid whirring atop it. I groan as fluorescent light floods my eyes, shocking to a system accustomed to darkness.

A sweet, flavorful smell fills my nostrils the second I sit up, and I open my eyes to see a glass of nectar, this one with only a straw and no lid, hovering under my nose in Pollux's outstretched hand. He waits expectantly. I accept it, watching him with distrust.

"I'm a drunk, not a murderer," he points out. "'Sides, I owe you. Promised Solace I'd make sure you didn't drop dead or some scary, overexerted son of Hades shit."

"Your concern astounds me," I deadpan, sipping from the nectar. It tastes of cinnamon, honey, and...sweet dough. I falter and stare down at it. For this reason, I avoid partaking of godly food; with it always comes half-forgotten memories, silhouettes of times forever lost to me now.

"Tastes like something from your past, huh?"

I look up at Pollux, eyebrows furrowing above my nose. His violet eyes search mine. "What?"

"The nectar." He motions. "I never see you drinking it, even if you're bleeding out from the gut."

"When have you ever seen me—?"

"Figure it's got something to do with the whole 'mind-wiped in the Lethe' thing you got going for you," he continues. I glower at him. "You don't even know _what _it tastes like, do you?"

"How is that any of your business?" I demand.

He holds up his drink. "Mine used to taste like my mom's homemade jam," he tells me. "Now it tastes like booze."

I snort. "Yeah, well, shouldn't it? Alcohol is your favorite—"

"It's not," he says. I wait. He doesn't continue.

I hesitate. "How much do you remember?" I ask. "Of—"

"Nothing," he tells me, but his eyes tell a different story. "Nothing anyone needs to know."

So he knows, I think. And he won't tell anyone else. This should reassure me, but it only leaves me more uneasy. Annabeth's idea to find me closure never had substance. Now there's nothing for me to do but wonder, forever, why I am the way I am.

I push up, searching the room with my eyes. My sword sits, still in its scabbard, on the table by my head. I scoop it up and fasten it my belt, pushing off the bed to pull on my boots one at a time. Pollux watches me do this all without speaking.

It's only when I march toward the door that he makes a small sound, one I recognize as appreciation. I falter, glancing back at him.

He shrugs. "Nothing," he says. "Just nice view."

I study him for a while, then dissolve into shadow.


	8. Part 1.7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section was unbelievably difficult to write, I will tell you now. Not only did I have to maintain continuity with descriptions of the Underworld from the original series while adjusting it for Nico's narrative, the impact this has on the rest of the universe—not just this story, but this universe—is immense. There is a potent emotional component like everything else in this, and it just proved nigh impossible to write, but here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Please note that anyone who has not read The Son of Neptune yet will be spoiled for the story from reading this from this point forth.
> 
> Also, if I may request you take a few moments after you finish reading to leave even a brief review. Feedback is always welcome, and while I will never invite hurtful derision that serves no greater purpose than inflating the reviewer's ego, I would appreciate any reactions you have to give me—and cherish constructive criticism. I also know a lot of people on this site discern between what stories to read based on the number of reviews listed on them, and I am putting a lot of effort and love into this. I'd like it to reach as many people as possible.

"_And as we wind down the road,_

_our shadows taller than our soul,_

_there walks a lady we all know_

_who shines white light and wants to show_

_how everything still turns to gold."_

_~ "Stairway to Heaven," _Led Zeppelin

The Door of Orpheus—an unassuming cluster of boulders toward the southern end of Central Park—stands before me, somehow more daunting than armies of monsters or the gold eyes of the Titan Lord himself.

My thoughts wander to when I came here with Percy. The memories bear a film of unreality akin to my memories of my early childhood, what of them I recall, and it scares me. My thoughtless scheme to exchange Percy for information played out mere weeks ago, yet I still feel as though I am remembering an event from decades ago. For a moment, the exact slopes of Percy's face are difficult to conjure to mind, his features shifting as much as the surface of the ocean.

"_We need music," I told him. "How's your singing?"_

"_Um, no."_

Is it my undying, unrequited affection that makes me wish I had convinced him to sing? It would be such a minor, unimportant thing, but it would be something else I experienced of Percy's life nothing could strip away from me. I could cherish it, nurture it—my own, personal recollection of the famed son of Poseidon, something not even Annabeth shared.

It occurs to me, rather suddenly, that I might yet get the chance. All the times I bit my tongue when I should have let it go, and they will not have been a waste. All my truths, all my questions left unanswered—he will hear them all.

A fragile, flickering, faint spark of warmth ignites in my chest. _I'm bringing Percy back_.

I already know all the things I will say to Bianca when I have her with me again. I rehearsed it all in my pitiful days with Minos, when I still plotted to exchange Daedalus for her spirit. No murder will be required this time, though. I can free my sister and my forbidden love.

This lightness in my chest must be hope, I think, and open my mouth to sing.

I can almost see Percy's smug expression, his glib, "Not a fan of _Led Zeppelin_, huh?" as he realizes my disinterest in his music preference at his fifteenth birthday party had all been for show. It brings a small smile to my face. I sing in his honor. My heart warms a little when the image of his face in my mind clears as I do.

The ground trembles underneath me. I lurch, catching my balance and my voice, before raising it in my clearest, purest register. Bianca used to sing to me. I try to imbue the song with the emotion and comfort she did.

The familiar stench of mildew, grave dirt, and sulfur assaults my nose. I open my eyes on the triangular crevice gouged out of the stone before me, a dark stairwell leading into oblivion.

I take a breath and descend into hell.

As I struggle to maintain my footing down the steep, slick slope, memories wash over me unwelcomingly. A familiar sense of doubt and dread blooms in the pit of my stomach just as it had when I braved this stairwell with Percy, only Riptide's potent glow to light our way below. How had I convinced myself to betray his trust so? How could I be so selfish in my pursuits, so as to endanger his life, endanger the _world _for little more than a flimsy hope at revelation?

I shake it away. In little time, I will begin my amends; I will draw our greatest hero from the depths of the Underworld, bathe him in sunlight, and beg forgiveness for all my past mistakes. He will allow me time to prove my trustworthiness again. He will thank me for bringing him back to his Annabeth.

_Or you could ask for payment_, I think, foot slipping off a step. I gasp, lunging out to catch myself on the wall. It's both rough and smooth somehow, but I don't linger on its contradictory nature, too horrified by my own mind.

_He'll owe you, _my thoughts continue. Something demented rings through them, lacing them with malice unbelonging to me. I crush my eyes shut, trying to force them out. _If you really do bring him back, he'll owe you—his reunion with his mother, his diploma from high school. You'll give him a second chance at life—a peaceful chance. That's a noble thing to do. A selfless thing. Really, it evens out if all you ask for in return is his love._

"No," I hiss, horrified and sickened. "He loves Annabeth. He'll never love me. All I want is to bring him back." But now, I struggle to believe myself. "I just want to set things right."

The voice falls silent, but I can still sense it there, lingering on the perimeters of my mind. Vile, selfish, reprehensible—_me_.

I clench my fist against the wall. It is Hades' influence, I tell myself. It comes from the blood I share with the Lord of the Underworld, but there is more to me than him. I also share blood with my mother—my kind, sweet, carefree mother, whose radiant smile charred in that hotel because she refused to hide. Because she could not fathom the idea of someone—let alone a _god_—murdering her children from paranoia.

I had been like her once, too—overly trusting, painfully _naïve_. I wonder how her naivete survived life's trials, for my curdled and soured as a mere child presented with the truth about what the cruel world does to brilliant lights—snuffs them out.

Until there is only darkness.

I will not act on these horrible thoughts, I tell myself. Percy will never even know I harbor affection for him beyond that of a friend. However twisted, they will remain within the boundaries of my mind, never to see daylight. Through practice, through discipline, I can be a good person.

I hope.

The stairs let out on a plain of obsidian gravel, near the base of a cliff from which the great River Styx cascaded in a fatal yet beautiful waterfall. The ramparts of Erebos beckoned in the distance, glowing with black flames. I might never understand how black can glow, but magic will never make sense.

Suddenly, I reconsider. It would not be against my understanding of Hades for him to trick me into pursuing his sword to free my friend and sister, only to reveal in the last moments it had been a ruse, fit to remind me of…something. As his only child, I did not believe he would harm me, but I had been shocked to discover Minos' betrayal, too. It wouldn't violate my understanding of the world, either.

_He needs you_, a voice trilled in my mind, much more pleasant than the hideous, ghoulish from before. _You have to help him._

I nod, resolved. I forge toward the black gates looming in the distance.

It feels like both an eternity and a breath before I reach my father's throne room, in the corner of which, the glass pedestal displaying The Sword of Hades sits. Its guards are all heaps of dismembered bone, scattered around the floor. My father's throne sits empty. Persephone returned to the surface world, presumably, after the war finished.

I cannot believe it. My blood hums in my veins. I wander toward the pedestal in a daze, unable to process this extraordinary turn of luck. It's cool to the touch—icy, so much I think it should be frosted glass, not this tinted, transparent casing. I snatch my hand back, eyes darting around. No one arrives to stop me.

I don't hold the sword in my hands yet, I remind myself. I don't have Percy and Bianca at my sides. It isn't over until they are alive and we are free. If my father saw fit to bate me into implicating myself, he will need me to hold his weapon in my shaky hands when his guards descend on me.

Still, I feel it in my bones—a thrill, a thundering heartbeat that sings. _This is it_.

Gingerly, I crouch down and pick up a fallen thigh bone. Translucent grey flesh sticks to it like a ghostly imitation of tissue. I grip it firmly, stare down the pedestal, and swing.

Glass shatters. Several shards nick my cheeks, the sting exquisite. I hiss. The piercing sound echoes through the great hall, ringing in my ears. My heart is soon to burst from my chest, I think. This is it. They'll catch me. They'll catch me red-handed. Will they force me to remain here for all eternity, never to see daylight again, hardly more than a shade myself?

_Who cares? _I hear myself think. _Without them, I'm already as good as dead._

I thrust my hand forward and wrap it around the hilt. My senses _thrum_. I feel powerful for the first true time in my life.

And the alarms screech.

I whip around. My pulse is soon to explode out my neck. Without thinking, I run as fast as my feet can carry me toward the exit. Skeletal guards bar my way. So many, I know I cannot set them all to sleep without collapsing. They start toward me, and in desperation, I slash the air with the sword.

They clatter to the ground.

There are familiar screeches in the distance—my father's wardens, the Furies.

There's too little time to think. They must already know my destination—I am a child of the Underworld as much as them. The air sings with my coming. They know me. They know I am here. They know where I will go.

So I just go there faster.

I stumble out of the shadow by a pretty suburban house, charging into the brilliant light of The Elysium Fields—sprawling, fragrant expanses of succulent plants, colorful with more life than most places on Earth. Too few people flit through the square, chatting happily with their companions.

Two of them, I recognize—a large, African American man, arms corded with pulsing veins and almost unreal muscle mass, and a petite, sweet girl, uncannily beautiful in every way, with long, raven hair cascading in ringlets down her back. They look over to me with wide eyes. The man tugs on his stunned girlfriend. They approach me.

"Nico?" Charles Beckendorf asks, a hesitant laugh falling past his lips. If my heart beat any slower, I might be concerned to note the unease in his tone. This is paradise. He should be unable to experience unease—unfettered. Now, though, I don't care. "What the heck you doing here, ma—?"

"No time," I say quickly. "Where are Percy and Bianca?"

Both Beckendorf and his girlfriend, Silena Beauregard, falter at that. They exchange a look before facing me. Silena speaks now. "Nico, I thought you—"

"_Where_?" I demand.

Beckendorf hesitates, glancing around, as though fearfully. "I…Nico, I'm sorry. Your sister..." Something plays with his expression—something I don't have the time to try to understand. "Bianca chose rebirth."

The world screeches to a halt. It ceases to turn. The air stills. My heart stops. Everything turns dark and terrible.

"What?" I breathe.

"She wanted another chance," Silena tells me. "To do things right." She, too, looks uneasy about her words. Perhaps because she can see the heartbreak in my eyes. "She loves you, Nico, she just—"

"Forget it," I spit, although I doubt I ever will. "Where's Percy?" I know he would never get reborn, not before Annabeth joins him here.

This, however, seems to shock the two blissful shades the most. "_Percy_?" Beckendorf echoes. "Why would he be here?"

I hear a screech. The Furies are bearing down on me. I am out of time for games. "Because he's dead!" I shout. "Now tell me where he is before they catch me!"

Beckendorf seems to see the sword in my hand only then. He stares. Silena fills his silence. "Nico, I don't know what you're talking about," she answers. "Percy isn't here."

"_What_?" I snarl. The Furies are all but on top of me now. Elysium will slow them down. They are creatures of wrath and torment; paradise does not agree with them. Still, it is only a matter of time. "You—he—" I scream in frustration. "Damn my father. I knew better than to trust an outstretched hand from him. Fine. I'll search Asphodel."

I duck back into shadow and dissolve before they can answer.

Asphodel is more terrible than The Fields of Punishment to me, I think, as I race through the endless yellow fields of empty spirits, milling without purpose. They never took their lives into their own hands—neither villainous nor virtuous, thus sentenced to an eternity void of all the things they never sought whilst they drew breath. To be stripped of everything you are like this…I would shudder if I didn't have a greater purpose.

I do not bother calling Percy's name. If Hades was cruel enough to sentence such a hero to this place, then he won't even know it. He won't know anything. I will have to drag him from this place and pull him into the daylight before I will truly have Percy back.

Except I can't find him. I'm quickly running out of time. The Furies can navigate these fields much better than the prairies I was just in. I must find him _now_.

In my haste and desperation, I would have so easily missed her, sitting underneath a cluster of poplar trees. She is washed out like the other shades, no real color shining behind her eyes or her features or her hair. Everything is in grey-scale. All I know is her bushy, natural hair puffs out in all directions, not unlike a majestic mane.

Most importantly, she stares at me—_straight at me_, her eyes bright with understanding.

We speak as one. "You're like me."

A Fury screeches—Alecto, I suspect, The Constant Anger. I glance back, heart pounding.

My sister speaks again. "But you're…you're alive. How—?"

"No time," I say quickly. "What are you _doing _here? Our father—"

"—couldn't do anything," she tells me. "I made my choice. I had to. They would have sentenced my mother to The Fields of Punishment if I hadn't made the deal."

More screeching, far closer. I can see Alecto now, circling like a vulture in the distance. She will sense me all too soon.

And then it hits me, all at once—Hades never meant for me to bring back Bianca or Percy.

He meant for me to give a sister I'd never known a second chance at life.

My heart sinks and lightens at the same time. I look at her, down at the sword white-knuckled in my grip. I swallow and lift my gaze to her. "You don't deserve this place," I tell her, convicted. I hold out the sword. She stares at it. "Let me give you another chance."

Her eyes might shine if she wasn't a shade. She gapes at me. "But…you don't even know me. You had to—"

"I can figure it out later," I tell her quickly. "Please. We're almost out of time. I need you to take this sword. I can bring you back—and this time, you can get Elysium like you deserve."

"Isn't there someone else you want to save?" she asks me, but I can see the hope sparking to life in her eyes. Is it me, or do they almost look like molten gold?

I bite my lip. "She abandoned me," I tell her. "Again. And I don't have enough time to find him, not right now." I thrust the sword at her again. "_Please_. Let me set one thing right tonight."

She purses her lips. "Thank you," she breathes, and grasps the sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: Nico's little freak-out over his thoughts before is a perfectly natural phenomenon a lot of people experience. They're called intrusive thoughts. If you guys have them, don't worry. They don't make you a bad person. It's just your brain firing off all the crazy ideas you would never act on in reality.
> 
> I'm gonna leave that there, because that's a little long for most updates for this story. If you guys have read The Son of Neptune, you know what just happened.


	9. Part 1.8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is random and likely the product of an unpredictable sleep pattern, but I have thought up a meme-like summary of Nico di Angelo’s psyche:
> 
> Nico: No one wants me.
> 
> Also Nico: WHOA! Hold the fuck up! What is this unconditional love I’m feeling? I am the embodiment of death and misery! You’re supposed to hate me! START HATING ME ALREADY!
> 
> There’s one more thing I’m annoyed I now have to say here because, apparently, bigots still like to pick fights. Hi. Yeah. Not only is the main character of this story canonically gay, this whole thing will be chock-full of all the LGBT representation that will fit. It’s kinda my thing. Fan interpretations of characters. Original inserts included for the sake of whatever. They’re all gonna have their places. I did not in-clude any disclaimers about this because I didn’t figure it mattered. 
> 
> Oh, also, in case any of you think I’m going to hell for it: I AM A SCREAMING BI-ROMANTIC ASEXUAL. There’s a longer rant about this on the newest update of my other story in this universe, The Forgotten Fear, because that was the one I recevied the stupid review on (deleted, so don’t worry about having to read it). 
> 
> If you’re annoyed by the fact—or the fact that it’s quite likely I will include some of my personal headcanons about various characters regarding sexuality at the end of updates—just…go away? Please? Don’t read my stuff. Unless you can do it without picking a fight and stay quiet…I don’t need your shit. 
> 
> For the rest of you, please read on. I’m sorry you had to read that. I’ve been pretty lucky in my life about avoiding people like that, so I guess I formed the faulty idea none would find me here to stir up trouble.

"_There are far, far better things ahead than what we leave behind." ~ C.S. Lewis_

Alecto never finds us in the yellowed fields of the unfulfilled, for I waste no time thrusting my half-sister under the shade of the poplar trees once she regains substance and life to whisk her far away into the interlocking channels of darkness. I abandon my father's sword when I do.

We emerge, staggering, in the middle of an alleyway, reeking of stale liquor. I spare no consideration to the journey, though it dawns on me too late that perhaps my half-sister disagrees, as she curls up on the ground, trembling with rattled breaths.

I hesitate, then crouch in front of her. She pulls her knees against her chest. "I'm sorry," I say, granting her space while she stares off into nothing, eyes straining impossibly wide in the onslaughts of her fear. "Shadow-travel is normal for me. It didn't occur to me you might not appreciate it, especially…"

I trail off. My half-sister's eyes are a million miles away. Her chest heaves with wretched gasps. She clutches her knees to her torso, rocking continuously. I doubt she can even understand me, so I wait and seize the opportunity to study her.

She is beautiful—rich, terracotta skin, full, luscious honeyed natural curls, and striking gold eyes. She wears a dirtied, tattered jumper over a discolored white shirt—a relic of her time in school, I realize.

After several minutes, she has not calmed. I grow worried. Two children of Hades out in the middle of the street this way, we will be sniffed out by monsters soon enough. This isn't far enough away from Mount Tamalpais to ease my worries. Not to mention, I know our father's minions will be hunting us now. I cannot permit them to drag her back into the Underworld.

A sudden, odd urge grips me. I close my eyes, sense around. "Arise and serve," I say under my breath.

Bones scramble to burst through the concrete nearby. A small, skeletal cat jumps out of the pavement a moment later. I jerk my head toward my sister. It obediently crawls into her lap to nudge her chin.

Her eyes clear slowly. She stares at the skeletal cat, bringing up a shaky hand to scratch its skull. It rattles its bones as if to purr. She smiles.

"I'm sorry," I say again. "I didn't mean to scare you. I guess…I thought you wouldn't be affected by shadow-travel the same way other people are, being my sister."

Her eyes dart up to look at me. She scoops up the skeletal cat to hug it. "I just don't like the darkness that much," she admits. "It reminds me of…"

I suspect she means her death. I do not pry. "Not many people do," I tell her. I offer a hand in greeting. "I'm Nico di Angelo."

She shakes it. "Hazel Levesque." She glances down at the cat, scratching under its chin. It continues to rattle its bones. "You control skeletons?"

I frown. "Don't you?"

She tenses and curls inward. "I…no." She looks at me. "My powers are more…on the other side of our father's…dominion."

It takes me several moments to understand. My eyes widen. "Riches?"

She nods shyly.

"People will probably like you more," I assure her. "Money is much less threatening than skeletons."

She snorts, but it's bitter, laced with contempt. "I wish." She meets her eyes. "All the wealth I summon from the earth is cursed."

I settle back on my haunches and nod. "Then you'll want to hide it, I imagine. There are a few people who wouldn't understand the risks." I think of the Stoll brothers. There is the chance they will leave her alone, so as not to anger me, but their greed often transcends their will to live.

She nods, then hesitates. "Why did you bring me back?" she asks, tone cautious.

I shrug. "You didn't deserve that place," I say. "I could feel it. Besides, at least the other shades don't even know they're spending eternity in nothingness. You didn't have that luxury."

She shudders and hugs herself tighter.

I hesitate. "Can I hug you?"

Hazel's eyes brighten with alarm. Then, after a moment, she nods. I slide closer to wrap my arms around her like Bianca used to do for me. She melts into my embrace. I stroke her hair. It resists the pressure I place on it, bouncing up as soon as I pull my hand away. I find myself endeared by it. Hazel tucks herself tighter against me.

"You're so nice," she breathes, as though in disbelief. "I thought I was the only nice child of Pluto."

I tense. "What?"

She clutches at my shirt, as though afraid I will pull away. "The only others I ever heard about were people like…like _Hitler_." She whispers the name with the fear and horror that betrays her as a child of the late-1930s, early-1940s, like me. A violent shudder racks her body. I clutch her closer instinctually. "I was so scared there was no one else like me who wasn't evil."

"You were wrong," I say softly, even as my spirits sink. I rub her arm in soothing circles, as Bianca did for me after nightmares. "We're family. I'll never scare you like that."

Even as I speak, my eyes find a spot a million miles away. I remember a conversation with Annabeth from one of the few instances I stopped at Camp Half-Blood between the events surrounding the labyrinth and the final battle for Olympus.

"_Hercules isn't even the proper name," she vented, angrily stuffing papers in a binder on her bed while she shoved stray bits of blond hair out of her face. "Stupid _Disney _sets their movie in Ancient Greece, still calls him the Roman name."_

"_Really?" I didn't care that much. I risked initiating a conversation with Annabeth by bringing up something I had fond memories of—_Walt Disney. _I hadn't realized she had such a profound hatred for the company, thanks to a certain 1997 animated film._

"_Yeah." She plopped down on the bed, looking at me. "It doesn't even make sense, the way they changed it. _Heracles _meant 'the glory of Hera,' and they named him that to try to appease her, so she didn't murder a child. The Romans renamed Hera _Juno_, so—"_

"_They renamed a goddess?" I interjected._

"_Mm-hmm," she confirmed. "All the gods with a few exceptions—like Apollo? That's where we get the names of the planets from. They're all names of major Roman gods. It's insulting."_

_I tilted my head. "Did my father get a planet?"_

_Annabeth winced. "Uh…I mean, yeah?" She looked uneasy. "Pluto was named after him. Thing is…Pluto was declared a dwarf planet a little while ago. It doesn't actually count as part of the eight official planets of our solar system now."_

"_Oh."_

At the time, I had been reaffirmed in my belief my father would always be delegated to less than by the rest of the world. Now, though, I feel something different at the memory.

Because I doubt severely I can bring my Roman half-sister to Camp Half-Blood without causing the next apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must have rewritten this afterword a dozen times. Suffice to say, I will be altering vast chunks of canon in this story even beyond the more obvious adjustments divined from Percy’s death and my ambitious aim to grant Riordan’s universe its due with mental health. Hefty amounts of research will go into smoothing over his plot holes and explaining some of the things that just do not make sense. Camp Jupiter’s structure will be reworked, characters will be re-characterized (three guesses who), and in general, there will be so much fundamentally different from the original series. Hopefully, I do a good job. If any of you guys have informed knowledge about these topics and realize I got something wrong, please tell me in the comments or through private messaging. Please understand that there is a lot to sift through here. I am doing the best I can, and I have my own original work into which I have to pour much more focus researching my topics. Thank you very much.


	10. Part 1.9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer hiatus, guys. I'm in a bit of a writing funk, and the best stuff I can write is fanfiction that won't be released for a while. It's a bit of a nightmare. I still intend to keep going, I'm just not good at regular updates. At all. I also tend to get sick a lot this time of year, so there's that.
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoy this update. I…will do my best to get an FF one to you guys soon, as soon as I figure out where I want events to fall.

"_Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows." ~ Michael Landon_

_Is this why Hades washed me in the Lethe? _I think to myself as I pull Hazel away from a neon-colored sports car parked in front of an office building.

At first, Hazel's unfailing mystification over the twenty-first irked me, her every delighted outburst at a new, remarkable sight forcing me to bite my tongue — until it dawned on me I might not have responded well to the modern day if the Lotus Hotel hadn't done its level best to dwarf any technological achievement beyond its barriers.

Well, that and the suspiciously Annabeth-like voice in my mind that said, _Oh, of course! Because your internalized homophobia could not at _all _be an unintended byproduct of your pre-Civil Rights upbringing. You must be the best-adjusted child of the WWII-era in history._

Needless to say, I field Hazel's overeager questions much better now, suffering cruel flashbacks to my first concentrated conversation with Percy when I was ten. How much had he wanted to surreptitiously push me over the same cliff Annabeth fell off?

This time, it's a suspiciously Percy-like voice. _You grew on me kinda like a cancerous mole._

I spare a small smile to his patented sarcasm before the terrible reality reoccurs to me with a vengeance. Next to me chatters a bubbly, altogether half-sister whose strange childlike brilliance warms my soul, but not the two people I braved the Underworld to resurrect.

" — tice how no one is giving us strange looks?" Hazel is saying as my pace falters down the street. She spins around in place, waving cheerfully to confused passersby probably wondering how such a delightful child can even exist next to the personified depression walking alongside her. "I mean…you're white and _no one _has even been mean about — Nico?"

I tear my eyes away from the contemplative nothingness into which I stared a moment ago. "Yes?"

Hazel's eyebrows knit together in concern. She takes my hand and steers me out of the flow of foot traffic. "You're thinking about the people you went to the Underworld to save, aren't you?"

I wince, averting my eyes. The concrete cracks with weeds next to my left foot. "I don't regret bringing you back, if that's what you're worried about."

She taps me on the shoulder. I lift my gaze to her again. "I'm not," she says. "But it's okay if you wish you had them instead."

"I _don't_," I insist. My voice pounds with sincerity. Hazel jumps a little. "I wish I had the time to save them, _too_, but…" I tilt my head back to stare the sky. Wispy white clouds spread like veins through it. I sigh. "Bianca chose rebirth. She didn't even _try _to talk to me about it. Just…" I make a vague, flapping motion with my fingers.

Hazel doesn't speak for a moment. "Was she your sister, too?"

I nod. "Same mother _and _father." I tuck my four fingers into my jean pockets. I refuse to entertain the notion I might be pouting. "She was — _is _— all I really remember from my past. But _no_. The second these super-cool maidens show up and offer her immortality away from her annoying little brother, that all goes out the fucking window!" I stop. "Oh. I…shouldn't have sworn. Sorry."

She shrugs. "I don't care." She wrinkles her nose adorably for a moment. "Am I allowed to say something mean about your sister?"

I grunt affirmatively.

"You're better off without that bitch."

I choke. For some reason, hearing profanity fall from her lips feels like heresy of some variety.

Hazel smiles. "Sorry." She picks at her fingernails. "Just…if she could be _that _selfish, I feel like she would have just…held you back. You're so nice. I mean, it's not just anyone who would risk the laws of life and death to save a distant half-sister they don't even know."

I fixate on three words, though. "Me?" I say, shocked. "_Nice_? I think you're the first person in my entire life to describe me as _nice_."

"You need to get better friends, then." She beams at me. A million pounds evaporates from my chest. Then, with a soft giggle, she embraces — no, _hugs _— me. I melt into her arms despite myself, arms curling around her midsection. Her hair smells like honey for some bizarre reason. I like it.

We pull apart after a moment. I remember her words before my reverie. I smirk. "You know, I should introduce you to someone named Martin Luther King Jr."

~1~

"It's _so colorful_," Hazel gushes as I steer her into a McDonald's. "Why is it _so colorful_?"

"I think because it's easier to sell people over-processed garbage if you package it with lots of pretty colors," I say, quoting Annabeth dully. "But they sell Happy Meals, so who cares?"

Of course, then we step _inside _the restaurant, and it takes fifteen solid minutes to stir my sister from her slack-jawed shock over the computerized displays and electronic kiosks at the front. She then mistakes an ATM for a jukebox.

Eventually, I convince Hazel to _sit _and _stay _while I order us food, discreetly reaching into the shadows by the table to pull out the credit card given to me for my birthday by my overenthusiastic father. She continues to gawk at anything and everything.

"Welcome to McDonald's," the dead-inside, washed-out woman behind the counter greets as though speaking from a script.

"You don't have to pretend to be nice with me," I tell her. "Trust me, I'm not the brightest ray of sunshine you will ever meet, either."

She casts an anxious look behind her. "Okay. What can I get you?"

While I order, I cast occasional looks back to Hazel. Somehow, I get carried away in a conversation with the fast-food employee — Hazel's friendliness must be infectious — and forget to look back for several minutes. When I do, I feel a stab of blind panic fill my chest.

Sitting at a table next to her are two men blissfully holding hands.

I sputter through an excuse with the fast-food worker, scrambling over while doing my best to ignore the envious pangs in my chest. My thoughts are a frantic mess of _oh gods she's going to be disgusted and repulsed and we're going to kicked out and I'm going to know I can never ever tell her I like men and she's going to hate me and —_

And the couple starts laughing.

I skid to a stop a few paces behind Hazel, endlessly confused. The bearded man squeezes his partner's hand and looks at her. "You're a sweetheart," he says quite sincerely. "California is pretty great about this sort of thing, though. Every now and again, we'll run into someone less accepting, but most bigots don't want the fight enough to say anything."

Hazel gasps. "Wait. You mean…" Hazel squeals, covering her mouth. "I _love _the 21st century!"

I resume my desperate scramble and step in front of her. "I'm sorry," I babble. "My sister can just get carried away. She didn't mean to disturb your — " My voice catches. "Your date."

"It's no trouble, son," the other man says. "She's adorable. I can tell she means it." He offers a hand to both of us. "Jeremiah. This is my life-partner, Chris."

_Life-partner. _The words reverberate around my skull achingly. My eyes start to burn. I can only stare at his hand.

Hazel sees my face and loses her exuberance. She introduces us, then steers me away as our order is called. It takes two boxes to carry all the takeout bags. She guides me out of the restaurant, into a nearby park, and we sit together.

Hazel is silent for a while. "You're gay, aren't you?"

I stare at the bags of food. Their smell is delicious, but I barely notice. They must be getting cold by now. We should start eating.

"You don't have to tell me," Hazel promises, reaching forward to take my hand. "I know you must be worried. Scared, even. My time…well, it was bad."

I look at her. "How?" It comes out despite my efforts to hold it in. "How can you come from back then without hating what I am?"

Hazel frowns. "What you _are_? Nico…I don't know a _lot_, but I know I had a lot of people say terrible things to me because of the color of my skin. I can't change that. I can't fix something I was born with, and I kind of doubt it's anything different with who you love." She squeezes my hand. "You're a lot more than just a boy who likes other boys. You're also a great brother. If you don't mind my saying, you have good taste in clothes. Maybe a little darker than what I'm used to, but…"

I laugh wetly. When did I start crying? "It…" I pick at the grass. "I was technically born in the 30's, too," I confess. "Except…I was frozen in time with my sister. After H—after our father bathed us in the Lethe. I don't remember _anything _from before, but I have all these feelings, and…"

"And you're scared of who you love without understanding why." Before I can wonder how a girl so young can sound so wise, she hugs me again. I rest my head on her shoulder. "I'll support you, no matter what you do," she promises. "It would take a lot more than you kissing another boy to make me hate you."

I can't fight the smile that stretches across my face. I pull back and reach for the bags of fragrant food. "Time to introduce you to the Happy Meal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have no idea how relieved I am to finally be able to write Nico without dragging everyone down with non-stop angst. It's relieving. Very. Also means I should be able to update a little more.
> 
> I will say this much for Rick: writing a WWII-era character appropriately reacting to the twenty-first century is not an easy task. I did my best. I know I sucked. Can we just cut me some slack, please? I've been pouring my research energies into my original work lately. I didn't have room to give myself anything resembling a better grasp on how Hazel might respond to the modern day.
> 
> For those of you following this for the angst, have no fear. There is much more yet to come. Nico is an unending ball of existential crises.
> 
> Also, yes: I know the whole thing in McDonald's was rather convenient and pretty damn weird. I don't care. I needed to write something that way as a bridge. I like to think Hazel is a little puffball who didn't bat an eye, despite her upbringing, when her big brother came out to her, so.


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